John Bytheway: 00:00:03 Welcome to part two of this week’s podcast.

Hank Smith: 00:00:07 Why do you think Dan, 19 says the Lord refused them, 20 says the people refused the Lord. What happened there?

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:00:14 This is probably my opinion more than anything other. It’s funny, when you read commentary on this passage, a number of biblical scholars say it’s clearly confusing, but seeing God, that’s not real. So, that can’t have been what it’s talking about. Even if I were a nonbeliever, I guess I would say this. I’d say okay, whether or not I believe, it doesn’t matter. The text suggests that it can happen. Complete conjecture, so you have to take it for what it’s worth. But I happen to think that one of those groups later understood that it is Israel’s fault for not meeting God, and don’t like that story.

Hank Smith: 00:00:51 So they, as they put in this part of… The Lord didn’t let them.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:00:55 Yeah. It’s the same way in the flood story, you have two different versions there. All the animals go on the Ark, two by two, male and female, including fowl of the air, two by two. That’s Genesis five. And then Genesis six opens, says all the animals went on the Ark two by two, male and female. Except for clean animals, they went on seven by seven. Oh, and birds, they also went on seven by seven. So you’re like, so which one is it? And in that case, you can make a bit of a guess as to which one’s older, clean and unclean animals didn’t exist in the days of Noah. So, you’ve got someone writing from the-

John Bytheway: 00:01:29 From the viewpoint of the Law of Moses, they’re writing-

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:01:32 Exactly.

John Bytheway: 00:01:33 Interesting.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:01:33 So, they’re trying to validate the Law of Moses, and make it older than it seems, and throws it back then onto the Noah story.

Hank Smith: 00:01:40 I would like to flesh out this idea of what do you do when you fall short? Because I can hear many people going, “That’s me. God says let’s do this, and I’m saying let’s do this, and then I back off and I don’t come through.” When you say provoke the Lord, can we say… I don’t know, I don’t want a listener going, “God is mad at me.” But this idea of, oh, what you could have had if you just believed, right? You could have these supernal experiences.

John Bytheway: 00:02:12 Maybe the word is refused. You refused the Lord. You, “No, I couldn’t do that.”

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:02:19 Well, I think section 84 helps in that regard, “They hardened their hearts and could not enter into His presence.” I’m always struck by that. The could not means that they have no ability to enter into the presence of God, but it is fronted by it. And they harden their hearts, it’s a choice, they chose not to. And choices have consequences. We’ve quoted a fair amount of Elder Bednar. He’s not the only one to have done it, he’s just the latest one that I remember. He’s given kind of a folk saying, “When you pick up one end of the stick, you’ve picked up the other.” So what I find intriguing about that in terms of understanding agency, is that there’s a responsibility, an agency, not just in terms of being able to choose, but ultimately to choose the consequence. You have to be aware of the consequences of the behavior.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:03:01 And in fact, when you look at the narratives in the Bible, more often than not the Lord often tells you the consequences to a set of behavior, and lets you choose. Whether it’s the story of Cain and Abel, whether it’s the story of Adam and Eve, whether it’s the story in the case of Israel, there are consequences that are laid out are explained. And if you decide not to heed His will, those consequences play out.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:03:23 Now having said that, what I do think is intriguing here about the provocation of Israel, because I do think this is the provocation. This is the event when they provoke the Lord ultimately. Are they going to provoke Him more? Yeah, you would wish they weren’t, but they’re going to. So, they cannot enter into the presence of God or have this experience at this time. But when you look at those, it doesn’t mean that they will never enter into His rest. They’re just not going to enter into His rest for a period of time. They’re going to have to work through the consequences of this behavior.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:03:57 And what’s intriguing is that the events of this day follow through to the end of Exodus, of where he gives them a tabernacle. And when you look at the tabernacle and its function as a temple, this place where God’s presence is going to be, there’s a sense of, okay, so you weren’t ready for the experience then, I’m actually going to give you a series of things to help prepare you for it. We talk about the Mosaic Law as a punishment, and there’s no question that the way Exodus is set up, is that the Mosaic Law comes as a result of this behavior. They’re non-choosing. They aren’t able to enter the presence of God. They don’t become a kingdom of priests. The priesthood is given to a particular family. And so, we call it a lesser law.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:04:39 But I think one of the ways that we can frame it to best understand it, is it’s a preparatory law. They weren’t ready, for whatever reasons they weren’t ready. Their minds weren’t in the right place, they weren’t thinking about the long picture, they weren’t seeing the long view, so God gave them a law. When you read the Law of Moses, the law is great because there’s a set of moral and ethical teachings that are simply true regardless of the dispensation. And I don’t mean just the 10 Commandments, but the moral and ethics that lie behind the 10 Commandments, those hold true regardless. That’s not a lesser law, that’s just the law. So when it comes to the moral and ethical teachings to Israel, those don’t change any. When Christ gets in there and they ask them what are the two great commandments? Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and mind and strength. And the second is like unto it, love thy neighbor.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:05:26 Those are straight out of the Law of Moses. This isn’t a lesser law in that regard, governing behaviors of daily interaction or daily activity. I think when you look at those, one of the primary purposes was to help the people view and see things in a manner that allowed for this greater cosmological perspective. Animal sacrifice, that’s certainly not unique to the Law of Moses either, it was being done before then. So, that’s not unique to it, but the manner in which you engaged in the different types of sacrifice, yeah, this helped you structure and think on a larger level or, lead to a greater perspective of things. Some of the designations that arise help you be able to distinguish and differentiate, and recognize your responsibility to be sacred, to be holy, which is ultimately what both Deuteronomy and Leviticus are going to talk about.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:06:17 So, I don’t think this is a sense of having never done this, never entering into His rest, does that mean I’m never going to let you enter into my rest. In the meantime, we’ve got to teach you how to see differently. So, I’m going to give you a couple things. I’m going to give you a law, which is going to teach you how to think differently, how to think of people differently. I want you to in fact, see people the way I see them. And I’m going to give you a tabernacle, which hopefully will teach you how to see yourself as I see you, for the same reasons that we talked about before, with the ordinances and the rituals that become associated with the tabernacle.

Hank Smith: 00:06:50 Would it be fair to say the Lord almost knew they were going to fail this first time, but he wanted them to see that they failed, in order so they’ll take what’s coming next a little more seriously? Because you don’t want to fail down the line in the future, I don’t want you to fail, so I kind of set you up?

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:07:10 This leads to a question that people have, which is, at least students will end up invariably to this point, which is, “So how do I have agency if God knows what I’m doing?”

Hank Smith: 00:07:18 God knew that they were going to fall, why did He even have them do it in the first place, right?

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:07:22 That’s exactly right. So, we’re here confronted with the omniscience of God, up against the ignorance of mankind. I don’t have a good answer. Except to say, what I tell my students, so an example that I give them, I say, “If I stood up at the beginning of the semester and said, ‘I know what grade all of you are getting,’ that would demonstrate my omniscience. But if I don’t tell you what that grade is, then your agency’s still intact. You know that I know what the grade’s going to be, but you have no idea whatsoever what your grade is going to be.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:07:57 And so by virtue of that, if I then say something to the effect of, ‘I know what grade you’re going to get, and what I’d like you to do is work on the following things and do your best,’ then that holds out the hope that you’re going to get an A in the class, right? I can set up, even as I tell you that I know what grade you’re going to get, I still won’t tell you the grade. And yet I can give you all the instruction to get an A. And since you don’t know what you’re going to get you’ll work as if you can get an A. Now, I limit your agency if I say something to the effect of, ‘I know what grade you’re going to get in the class, and Hank, you’re not getting higher than a C minus.'”

Hank Smith: 00:08:30 It’s not going to happen.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:08:31 At that point, now I’ve limited your agency and I’ve crossed a line. But as long as I don’t tell you what the grade is, then it’s up to you. And so, if I keep playing with this analogy further, and I say, “All right, I know what grade you’re going to get. And this is what you need to do to get an A, and you turn in an assignment and it’s not A worthy. And I say, ‘Tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you my feedback and let you revise that assignment.’ Notice that you still have all the agency, you still don’t know what grade you’re getting, but I’m giving you the opportunity to revise it. Whether or not you do is completely, totally up to you.” And so I think sometimes, even though the Lord is omniscient, He tells you that He knows what grade you’re going to get, but that doesn’t affect what grade you’re going to get. That’s up to you.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:09:18 And He puts everything in place for you to be able to do it, and I think He does give us revisions all the time. He gives us feedback all the time, and gives us through the Atonement, the ability to revise. And so, as I go back to Israel’s experience, to some degree it is this very tragic story. This is what they could have had happen, but it didn’t. And yet the rest of the narrative is basically the Lord giving revisions and saying, “All right, here’s your chance to redo. You can redo this.”

Hank Smith: 00:09:50 It’s a redemption story, but it starts out just kind of tragic, kind of sad. You could have had this, you didn’t. Okay, let’s get you ready.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:09:59 And it’s very possible moving forward that individuals did, we simply don’t know.

Hank Smith: 00:10:06 I laugh when I hear you explain 19 and 20, the Lord was in, they were in, and then they were out. That’s my life right there. That’s got to be so typical of everyone’s experience. The Lord was in, I was in, and I fell short. I got scared, I drew back.

John Bytheway: 00:10:25 It kind of reminds me of Steven Robinson’s book, Believing Christ. Well, you believe in Him, but a lot of us just don’t believe Him. That was the why he wrote it. Just believe Him, believe that He can do what He said He can do.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:10:37 It’s back to that confidence. Jacob talks about this in Jacob chapter four. In verse 11, he says, “Wherefore, beloved brethren be reconciled unto Him, God, Through the atonement of Christ, His only begotten son. And you may obtain a resurrection, according to the power of the resurrection which is in Christ and be presented as the first fruits of Christ under God. Having faith, and obtained a good hope of glory in Him before he manifests Himself in the flesh.” He’s not talking about resurrection, he’s talking about a particular resurrection. That thanks to Christ it’s possible for you not only to be resurrected, but to obtain a resurrection and a good hope. Which in the Book of Mormon is associated with a promise. A promise of glory, a hope of glory in Him, before He ever manifests Himself in the flesh. He’s talking about receiving exaltation.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:11:23 And then verse 12. “Now beloved, marvel not that I tell you these things, for why not speak of the atonement of Christ and attain to a perfect knowledge of Him, as to attain to the knowledge of a resurrection in the world to come?” For Jacob, his thinking is the atonement of Christ makes resurrection possible, but it also makes it possible for exaltation. He says, why not talk about it to the highest common denominator? Resurrection’s cool, but this is cooler. Why not talk about it? What’s the worst that happens? What’s the worst that happens? It sounds kind of a roundabout answer to your question, Hank, of, “Oh, I don’t feel I’m worthy, or I’ve failed when I do these things.” And I’m kind of like, yeah, so? Why not think about it? Why get caught up in the things that can pull us down, the things that keep us from not being ready in three days? Why not think about it? And if it happens, it happens.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:12:25 I don’t know how, if I can describe it better than that. The commandment to be perfect, that we always try to qualify, and that we always try to talk about, “Well, He can’t mean this in terms of perfection,” and, “He can’t mean that.” And I understand all of that, and I know what the Greek word means. And having said that, how much faith should that instill in an individual to know that God thinks you can pull it off? Why would He give you the commandment, if he didn’t actually think you could pull off. So I think when God says be perfect, I’m kind of like, so it’s achievable, it’s doable. And however you want to define it, ultimately, even if it is a process or we become perfect in this, and then we become perfect in this, and we become perfect in this, don’t be dismayed by the promise itself. God wouldn’t give it, if He didn’t think you could pull it off.

Hank Smith: 00:13:17 Just the fact that He tells you it should give you a lot of confidence in yourself.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:13:21 I think he gives you plenty of material later that says, “Oh, whether this life or in the next life, you’ll endure to the end. I’m not particularly concerned, the when, but just know that you can be.” It’s that confidence, do you think you can pull this off, do you think you can engage with these people? Do you think you can have this experience? Whether or not it happens right now isn’t the point, but do you see it? Can you see it? Do you imagine it? And why not speak to a perfect knowledge of Christ? Why not? What’s the worst that happens?

Hank Smith: 00:13:52 This is just so great. 19 and 20, I see totally differently. Wash your clothes, three days, come to me. Okay, here we go. And then they just can’t do it. They just either don’t believe, whatever you said, they’re too scared. They’re just like, “Moses, you go, we can’t go.” Why in between then, of this, do we get these 10 Commandments? It’s just dropped right in the middle.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:14:15 I think part of it, again, is you’re dealing with an amalgam of these different versions, different purposes, different accounts. One of them could be simply the fact that the 10 Commandments are universal. These are not part of the Law of Moses, these are not a punishment given to Israel. This is just simply the law. We find granted in the Book of Mormon, they’re quoting the 10 Commandments, but you get a version of this in the Doctrine & Covenants, you get Christ reiterating the centrality of these commandments in the New Testament. And when you look at the commandments themselves, you can see how they divide out. They deal with your own personal relationship with God, and then they deal with your personal relationship with other beings, other people.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:14:56 I describe it in terms of spiritual development, that we have two primary sets of relationships that we’re developing. There’s this vertical relationship that we have with God that is very personal, very private. Nobody else really has that relationship, it’s just you and God, and that’s got to grow and get stronger, and bigger and taller. But at the same time that’s happening, this has got to be expanding outward as to who my brother is, who my neighbor is. And if these two things aren’t happening at the same time, then one’s not really experiencing spiritual growth. So when you look at the 10 Commandments, they really do govern both set of relationships. The relationship you have with God, the relationship you have with the larger community of humankind. Your neighbors, your family.

Hank Smith: 00:15:41 Yeah. So, is that the first five, “Thou shall have no other gods before me, thou shalt not make any graven image, not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” What did I miss? I had four there. Maybe it’s four and then six.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:15:59 Well, it’s interesting. The Sabbath one, I think is a tricky one. Or not tricky, but I think that’s kind of a pivot one, simply because the Sabbath is both. It’s both a communal day, and a day to develop your personal relationship with the Lord. So you’ve got the Sabbath, but then there’s the honor thy father and thy mother. This has to deal with the family. Don’t kill, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, don’t covet. These have to deal with your relationship with your fellow beings.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:16:24 We don’t have any instruction as to ultimately why it’s separated from the rest of the law that is going to be given in about chapter 20, starting in verse 22. But we do have the separation. And it’s suggested the 10 Commandments can be distinguished from the other elements of the law. This isn’t the Mosaic Law, these are the 10 Commandments, they govern the behavior. And they are guidelines and commandments to be used, regardless of what dispensation. So, it’s very possible that people looked at it and went, “Well, this isn’t part of the quote unquote, Law of Moses. It’s the law, but it was given at the same time, like it’s given to every… We’re just going to glump everything together.”

Hank Smith: 00:17:02 Do you want to just walk us through these, and just say, “Look, this is a different aspect of your relationship with God that this offers, this one is different aspects of your relationship with other people that this offers”? Would there be a benefit of just walking through them? Do you do that with your students?

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:17:20 You certainly can. If you go through the laws, they’re not a step by step process per se, but they do lead to some interesting conclusions, particularly when you put them in the context of other set of scripture. Thou shalt have no other gods before me, interestingly has been prefaced by verse two, says, “I’m the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt.” So, we’ve got a definition here of Godhood for lack of a better term, a function of Godhood. A God is one who’s going to deliver, to bring out. To some degree, there’s an element here of kinship that is being suggested between God, Jehovah, and Israel. Namely that he brought them out of bondage, he’s acted as a redeemer in that regard, to follow the Old Testament understanding of Redeemer.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:18:06 And by virtue of that then, “I have been your God, this is what gods do, and I’ve been your God, so I don’t want any other God before me. We have a relationship, we’ve established a relationship. We’ve got a history of a relationship, so I will be your God.” But the other elements of this, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down themself to them, nor serve them. For I the Lord, thy God am a jealous God.” But by meaning that, He’s not jealous in the sense that, again, that he’s got some fragile self-esteem, but, “I take my responsibilities very seriously as a God. This relationship is a real relationship that you and I have ratified, we have entered into an oath, we’re bound. And so, I’m going to take it seriously. I expect you to do so as well.”

Hank Smith: 00:18:57 Do you think he’s trying to also correct some of that Egyptian culture, that they picked up over the centuries? Was this something that the Egyptians did?

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:19:07 We know they did, but so does ancient Mesopotamia, so does the Hittites, so does the Canaanites, this is just what everybody’s doing in the Ancient Near East. The idea of a monotheistic or a henotheistic approach is kind of unique, but then again, it’s not like the Egyptians have the same type of story that the Israelites just had. If there is a relationship with God, and delivering people and moving them out, we don’t see that described in the Ancient Near East like this at all. This is a unique narrative of a group of people who have this relationship with deity, and it’s a covenant relationship. It’s not just, “I’m all powerful,” it’s a covenant relationship. There’s expectations.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:19:47 This is built into our doctrine, we have a covenant relationship with God. “I, the Lord am bound when you do what I say.” When you do not do what I say, I’m not bound. It’s this covenant. If you follow your end of the bargain, I’ll follow my end of the bargain. That’s how it works. And by the way, it’s that allows us to have trust in Him, isn’t it, ultimately? That because He takes this so seriously, because it defines who He is, in His relationship, we trust in that. That’s why in some ways, faith carries with it even an economic understanding. I can trust in that merchant because I know he doesn’t cheat. And so, we go back to that merchant. Now, I hate saying that, because our relationship with God is one that we often described in terms of familial terminology. The truth is, families are bound by covenant too. The genetics are less important in the concept of a family, certainly in the case in the Old Testament, and in the New. The genetics aren’t important.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:20:44 It’s the covenant relationship that exists between the members of… It’s the covenant relationship that exists between a father and mother, that ultimately defines them as father and mother. Abraham chapter one, verse two talks about how Abraham wants the blessings of the father and the right to administer the same. What’s intriguing to me about that, is if the blessings are the blessings of the fathers, then the fathers have those blessings, and Abraham wants them, and the right to administer them, then that’s what makes him a father: the right to administer these blessings. It’s not the genetics. So, when we talk about the posterity of Abraham, we sometimes do it a disservice if we focus in on just the, am I the literal offspring of Abraham? That doesn’t matter. Ultimately, it’s the covenant relationship. Isaac didn’t get the covenant because his dad was Abraham, he got it because he was a righteous, worthy individual who came to the Lord.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:21:38 And this is the argument that Christ is making in the New Testament. Just because you’re the descendants of Abraham, doesn’t mean the covenant’s yours. And so ultimately it’s this covenant relationship that is stressed. It’s the covenant relationships that exists between us and God. We may be the offspring of God, but what makes Him our father is His ability to bless us. And what makes us sons and daughters is our choosing to receive. Son and daughter is conditional. We may be the offspring, but we’re not necessarily the sons and daughters of God. And when you read about the phrase, or read that sons of God, or sons and daughters of God in the scriptures, it’s always conditional.

John Bytheway: 00:22:14 Yeah. You’ll have the power to become the sons of God.

Hank Smith: 00:22:17 Why does he tie this to graven images? I’m not a statue?

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:22:22 Yeah, I’m not a statue. I’m a living being. There’s an element that lies behind that. And I haven’t fully fleshed out all aspects of that, but it is intriguing to me for instance, that in 3 Nephi chapter 11, they have an experience. And it’s in fact, very similar to the experience that they probably should have been having in Exodus 19. In this case, Christ comes down and they have the opportunity to meet with Christ. Now, He is resurrected, and so what do they do? They feel the prints of the nails in his hand, and they thrust their hands into His side. These are intrusive. But beyond that, what’s intriguing is He says, “And you will do these things so that you might know that I am the God of Israel, and the God of the whole earth.” What strikes me about that, is that somehow this experience must lead you to understanding something about the nature of divinity. There’s an element of what it means to be a divine being, that will be demonstrated by you touching deity.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:23:15 If that’s the case, then certainly one of the things that you might take away from it is that gods are living things. They have bodies, they move. I don’t know how far you would thrust your hand into the side, but you’re feeling flesh and you’re feeling warmth. It’s not a corpse. So, you’re coming away with an understanding that God has a body, and it’s a living body, it’s alive. It’s possible that what you’re seeing here, an element of this is, I want you to understand fully, completely that I am a living being, embodied even. And that’s the idea, and that’s the expectation. I don’t want you building a graven image. One, you might get it wrong, carve me the wrong way. But the other element of it is, is I’m not that. I’m not a stone, I’m not wood, I’m living. And this concept of a living deity, I think plays such a fundamental role in an understanding of God. And by virtue of this relationship, you have a relationship with a living being.

Hank Smith: 00:24:17 And he says in verse six, “I am merciful”, I’m living merciful, showing mercy unto them that love me and keep my commandments.” A statue can’t do that, a statue can’t show mercy.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:24:29 The element of that, if we go with the living body idea, there’s an immediacy to it. You’d pray to maybe an idol for mercy, but in this case, you are going to see. You’re showing mercy, this is something that you’ll be able to experience. There’s a tangibility to this mercy or an immediacy to this mercy. One of the other reasons maybe why you’re not to build a graven image, is to some degree, mankind is that image. So back in Genesis, you have the idea here that humankind is made in the image and form of God. You don’t need to build anything else, you yourselves are the tangible symbol of me.

Hank Smith: 00:25:12 So, connect that to Genesis 1, “God made man in His own image.” Don’t make anything new, just look around you.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:25:18 That’s exactly right. When you see the rest of the Law of Moses, there’s no question that God expects you to treat your fellow beings with the same respect and understanding that God himself treats them.

Hank Smith: 00:25:29 That’s a fun insight. I’d never even, I haven’t thought about that. When God says, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God in vain.” When I grew up, it was you just don’t say the name of God casually. Over the years, the idea of covenant, don’t take on this without meaning it, taking the covenant in vain. I’m willing to take upon myself the name of thy son, don’t take that in vain. So it’s added a little more nuance through the years, but I’d love to hear what you think.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:26:00 I think it’s the same way that you just mentioned. At least that’s the way Christ seems to understand it. So, when you get in the sermon on the mount in the New Testament, he’ll expand on this and say, “Don’t just not take the Lord’s name in vain, don’t swear on anything.” The idea, I think that lies behind this is oaths mean things. If you’re going to enter into an oath, I expect you to take that seriously. So don’t enter into an oath, don’t promise something that you’re not willing to do. There’s an element of honor and shame.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:26:27 These two aspects played a particular role in Ancient Near Eastern society, your honor means things. And it does today too, but we play a little more fast and loose with our concept of honor. But back then, that’s not the case. If you’re going to say you’re going to do something, there’s an expectation that you’re going to do it. You see that in the Book of Mormon as early as chapter two, the brothers are just absolutely ticked, and yet still felt bound to it. That’s what I find intriguing by that, it’s like, “Ah, Nephi…” We have no choice.

Hank Smith: 00:26:59 Because we promised.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:27:00 Right, oaths mean things. And so, if we take it by that we can really see it as a reflection, or at least the other side of maybe what we were talking about in verses five and six. The Lord’s going to take this relationship seriously, He takes His end of the oath seriously, I expect you to do the same. Don’t enter into oaths that you’re not taking seriously. Don’t promise to do things-

Hank Smith: 00:27:23 That you have no intention of doing.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:27:25 It’s possible that if you’re taking the Lord’s name in vain, in that sense, you lose the sacrality of the Lord’s name. It just becomes common use, you don’t mean it. So He’s saying your word means things. I’m not saying that I think that the Lord is saying that you always have to be sober and somber, certainly, but He is saying, “You need to think real hard about who you are, and what you are doing and what you’ve agreed to. Because I do.” I talk about this sometimes with students is, I know we sometimes like to describe our relationship with God as he’s an adult or a parent and we’re little children. And I get that in terms of the timeframe, kind of, because we’re all eternal beings. But what always strikes me about whenever I’m talking about the law, whether it’s the Law of Moses or the law in any dispensation, is how much He ends up treating us like adults, in this sense like equals. There are things that maybe we’d let our little children get away with. He’s like, “That’s not an option. We’re equals on this one.”

Hank Smith: 00:28:27 Maybe we like the parent child relationship, because it gets me out of a lot of, “Oh, He gets me, He understands me. He knows I’m just young.”

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:28:35 I fully get why we do, but the Lord doesn’t treat us that way. And part of that might be, again back to this concept of vision of scale. I don’t have a great way to describe it, because I’m bound by space and time in a way that God is not. But scale makes a difference of things. For instance, the separation between us and God seems vast from my perspective. But if you were to look at it from an eternal perspective, the distance between me and God, it’s gone. From an eternal perspective, and that’s His view. It’s not mine, it’s not my view, but it is His view. I don’t think He sees as much space between us as we like to think that there is. It’s a perspective, and He’s got an eternal one, I do not. And so by virtue of that, as I look at these laws, they’re not for children, they’re for adults. If I’m going to take this seriously, I expect you to take it seriously.

Hank Smith: 00:29:30 Yeah. And a child, as much as I love my children, you need to be more mature in order to take things seriously. Just the fact that He’s saying, “I want you to take this seriously,” says I’m talking to people who can take things seriously.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:29:46 That’s exactly right. I was just going to say, and because of the placement of this and because it just kind of comes out of nowhere, and it doesn’t really have the same setup, who knows when this was given? This might have been given earlier to Israel and said, “These are your expectations moving forward. So when I come in three days, here we go. Let’s do this.” These are just a set of principles that hold true regardless. This isn’t a lower law, this is the law.

Hank Smith: 00:30:08 I love the pivot one you told us about, like the Sabbath day can be a mix between my relationship with God and my relationship with the community. Because from here on out, it’s going to be community commandments. The Sabbath is going to be the transition. Never thought about that before.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:30:24 You see in verse eight, you can see a connection between that and the Lord’s original offering to Israel to be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. So, now I’m going to give you the Sabbath and I want that to be kept holy too. And if we’re looking at holy as that sense of not just separation, but of completion or wholeness, then it suggests that one of the purposes of the Sabbath is to help us become whole, to help us become complete. When you look at the creation of the Sabbath, it’s an interesting place in the creation narrative. Talking about different sources there, seems to be two sources, Genesis one and then Genesis two, which have come at the creation from two different perspectives. What’s the bridge between those two, is this institution of the Sabbath.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:31:06 And I’ve looked at the Sabbath before, as akin to a dedication. You can think of it as a dedication of the temple, then it becomes useful. Is the dedication of the temple an end of a process, or is it the beginning of a process?

Hank Smith: 00:31:22 Yeah, it’s both.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:31:23 It’s a liminal state. And if any of my students end up hearing this, they’ll go, “Oh, liminal. Yep,” eye roll right there. But the concept of liminality is that you’ve got these in between states that allow for transformation to happen. Liminality comes from a Latin term limin, meaning threshold or doorway. So if you stand in the doorway, are you in or out of the room? Neither, but its function is to facilitate movement from one to the other. And without it, you couldn’t move from one state to another. Well, if you can think of it that way, believe it or not, ordinances are liminal in nature. These are in between states that allow us to move from one state to another. Does that make sense?

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:32:04 Or you can think of the temple as a liminal space. You’re not meant to stay in there forever, but does it lead to a transformation from one state to another? Yes, a student’s asking sometimes, “Is the mortality state liminal?” And yeah, in the sense that it is a probationary state, a preparatory state, no, it’s not permanent. But it transforms us from one state of eternity to another state of eternity. The Sabbath then, is a time period that is given to us that carries with a sense of liminality. It’s this in between. Does it end a week, does it start the week, or does it do both? Is it like a dedicatory period, in which we can dedicate or end a particular period of time, and start a particular period of time in a new way than we did before?

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:32:51 So, the Sabbath has a function, and that function is to bring about change and transformation. You can look at the creation story and see that even as we’re looking at maybe two different versions, you got Genesis one, which really tells you about the physical creation of the Earth, and then you get Genesis two, which talks about the social creation moving forward, the creation of society, the creation of community. With the institution of marriage, with the institution of naming things. The animals are already created, but the naming of them gives them an identity and a function within society. And so, you have the creation of a social organization in Genesis two. What is the bridge between these two? The Sabbath. And so, we can look at the Sabbath the same way. Elder Bednar’s talked about the Sabbath in similarity to the temple, that the Sabbath is a sacred time, and the temple is a sacred place, but they have the same function: to help us recognize holiness, and perhaps become more holy.

Hank Smith: 00:33:48 Tell me that word again, liminal?

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:33:51 Liminal.

John Bytheway: 00:33:53 What is the origin of the word Sabbath, and what’s the Hebrew of it?

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:33:58 It’s Shabbat. We’re not sure exactly, because it shows up in Genesis two, the institution of the Sabbath, many believe that it is related to the Hebrew word Shabbat meaning seven, so seventh day. But whether or not that is an ideology, meaning it’s just being associated with it in the narrative, it’s unclear. So you’ve got rest, and an allusion with it, relationship to the seven. Ultimately, it’s just the term that’s being used to describe this. Now, for Israel, interestingly you have a number of things that can be referred to as Sabbaths, or that can carry with it a sense of Sabbath day transformation. In fact elsewhere, I’ve looked at again, 3 Nephi and the events of Christ’s coming, of that first day particularly, really all the way through the end of it, as a Sabbath. Not in the sense that it happened on Sunday, the way we would recognize it, but it has all the characteristics of a Sabbath. Certainly of a dedication. That same kind of in between, starting anew, but also completing and finishing.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:34:58 If you look at the Sabbath in Genesis 2, there’s a couple of activities that are actually associated with it. So, when we talk about it as a day of rest, it’s an intriguing rest. A fair amount of biblical scholars don’t believe it means that God just went to sleep, but it means it’s a change of pattern of behavior. And so, if you look at verse three, God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. Both of those would have happened on the Sabbath, suggesting that the acts of bless and sanctifying, becoming holy, are Sabbath day activities, blessing and sanctifying. And then as you can see there in verse one, there’s an implication that groups were meeting. So, there’s a sense of communal meeting, blessing, and sanctifying that happens on a Sabbath. These are three activities that can take place on the Sabbath.

Hank Smith: 00:35:42 That’s from Genesis 2, verse 3?

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:35:45 Genesis 2:1-3.

Hank Smith: 00:35:47 Blessing, sanctifying, communal meeting. That sounds like my Sabbath.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:35:51 Assembly. Yeah, I call it assembly.

Hank Smith: 00:35:53 Quite an explanation on the Sabbath day.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:35:55 Yeah, including in verse 10. So when I say that it’s this playing dual purposes, both with your relationship with God and with the community, you can see that in verse 10 when it says this is to be a day of rest, then this new type of day for everybody. And I think one of the intriguing ones is even including the stranger that’s in your gate. If you have a visitor who isn’t even Israelite, but they’re there with you in your household, they should be able to experience the blessings of the Sabbath, of rejoicing, and of blessing, and of sanctification and assembly. The Sabbath is not meant to be a day of just somberness.

Hank Smith: 00:36:29 There’s some inclusion there too.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:36:32 There’s huge inclusion. This is a day that is set apart for you to recognize the divine community, for lack of a better term, or something that Joseph Smith calls the economy of God, the understanding of the relationships of the divine community, which includes everyone, including the stranger. In modern Judaism today, the Sabbath is, there’s a set apart day. And of course you could use a number of examples, but I’ll use Fiddler on the Roof, which I think is a great, great musical. They have the Sabbath, and in the Sabbath, Tevye and his wife both bless the family, don’t they? They open up with, they light the candles. It’s kind of like we’re recreating everything, it’s dark and then they light the candles, it’s a reminder of the creation. And then you have both mother and father blessing those that are gathered together. And it is a gathering, everyone’s gathered together including the stranger, the one that came out of the blue, out of nowhere. You’ve got this concept that the Sabbath is a communal thing to be shared, in which blessing and sanctifying can take place. And it’s everybody, whether you’re Israelite or not.

Hank Smith: 00:37:40 You and President Monson both love Fiddler on the Roof. He would quote that all the time.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:37:46 But it does carry with a sense that in some ways, you’re reenacting the creation story that was done by the Lord Himself.

John Bytheway: 00:37:52 I remember, they light the candles and they sing the song, and they do this in the musical. But I didn’t know that was remembering the creation. I’m going to remember that.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:38:02 And that again, reinforces some of the things that we’ve talked about before with the other laws. The creation narrative is not a separate narrative from the history of Israel. In fact, when you get into Isaiah and elsewhere, the creation narrative, and for instance the splitting of the Red Sea, are going to be treated as the same events. They’re on a continuum of the same type of thing. The creation story and the Exodus story are ultimately the same basic storyline to Ancient Israel.

Hank Smith: 00:38:30 Come out of the water, right? They both come out of the water.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:38:33 Coming out of the water. Older creation narratives where God is a warrior that fights the monsters, that’s going to show up as a description of the Exodus story. So, you just have this idea that we’re repeating the creation story. And by virtue of that, then you become similar to God. And if that’s the case, then yeah, you’re doing divine things on the Sabbath, just like God did.

Hank Smith: 00:38:54 It’s a chance to be like Him, gives us so often anyway.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:38:58 If we’re going to go back to something even earlier, it’s possible that we could look at the Sabbath as a day where these experiences that you could have interacting with different members of the divine community, He set one apart. Now how many of us take advantage of that? I don’t know. But it could be we have one day a week in which the Lord says, “I don’t want you to worry about anything. Just concentrate on these things.” We don’t, I don’t, I don’t do it enough. But I always wonder what would happen if I could? According to the Book of Revelation, John receives revelation on the Sabbath.

Hank Smith: 00:39:28 The Lord’s day, right?

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:39:30 What would happen if I actually took seriously the Sabbath, and used it for the way that it could be used? Could the blessings of Doctrine and Covenants 107 actually happen?

Hank Smith: 00:39:41 It’s no longer a burden. It’s a blessing.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:39:45 It’s a blessing.

Hank Smith: 00:39:45 It’s not weight, it’s wings.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:39:46 A place where the community can engage with God.

Hank Smith: 00:39:50 Now the next one is my personal favorite, which I quote to my children all the time, “Honor thy father and thy mother,” so they don’t kill you, “So your days will be long upon the land.” He moves into family, from Sabbath day. This is kind of like creation, Adam and Eve, husband and wife.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:40:10 And covenant. Because again, family relationships are covenantly bound. This is the element of it, so this is, you are to honor thy father and thy mother. These are individuals that are covenant bound to you. And again, I can’t say that Abraham chapter one, verse two is informing this verse. I don’t think necessarily the writers are thinking of Abraham one when they’re doing that, but we can look at that. And if a father is one who has the right to receive the blessings, and administer the same, to some degree that’s a principle of what a father is, that is understood by a fair amount of women in the church.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:40:45 Meaning if you’ve listened to women’s conferences in the past, they were often taught that you can be a mother without having offspring. And so, what that seems to reflect more than anything else is this covenantal nature to these two designations. A father and mother isn’t just about one’s genetic relationship, these are terms that are ultimately associated with covenantal responsibilities. I’ll embarrass my boys a little bit here. When they all were in fifth grade and receive that maturation lesson that we all got, well, that meant they got to come to dinner with Dad, and sit down and explain the facts of life. And I’m a professor and I can do that pretty dryly and… They’re like, “Oh, here we go.”

Hank Smith: 00:41:30 Thanks, Dad.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:41:32 Yeah. My oldest boy Jack, he was good. My younger son, Sam, he had more questions, and I decided to bring Jack along with that. And Jack’s like, “I’m so embarrassed, Dad, I can’t.” I’m like, “It’s fine. We can answer these questions.” What I would tell them ultimately was, and granted, this more ties into me trying to express their priesthood responsibilities, but I said, “Here’s the deal: in the end, anybody can be a dad, but the Lord wants fathers. And that’s a different ballgame, He wants someone who has the blessings of the fathers, and the right and the authority to administer the same. Anybody can be a dad, but he’s looking for fathers.”

Hank Smith: 00:42:10 It’s not genetics, it’s covenants.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:42:12 If we look at it from that perspective, which granted, maybe is reading a little bit more into the text than perhaps what was intended. But honor thy father and thy mother would carry with those covenantal responsibilities that you have, for those family obligations that you have. And by the way, you can see that definition of fatherhood in the New Testament with the parable, the prodigal son. In that story, it’s a fascinating parable, because that youngest son wastes his inheritance. And then when he realizes or comes to himself, it says, as he came back to himself, he realizes he needs help. So he says, “I’m going to go to my father,” and then says, “And I will be his servant for I’m no longer worthy of being his son.” That right there is an indication of an understanding that just because you’re the offspring doesn’t guarantee that you’re a son. That son-ship is earned, and he’s lost the rights to that.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:42:59 Now, that’s the beautiful part of the rest of the parable, and that could be talked about on another day, about how the father without saying a word, accepts his offspring back as a son, and why the oldest brother has a problem with that. But that’s a whole other story. The point is simply this, is that honoring thy father and mother probably ties back to some degree of covenant relationship, again. And for a funny version of this, is Jeremiah. In the book of Jeremiah, he’s going to explain how he doesn’t like having to do what he does. He doesn’t like being a prophet, he doesn’t have a particularly happy message to deliver to Israel. That’s not his calling. He mentions, “Ah, I curse the day that the midwife brought me forth. I curse the man that ran to my father and said, ‘You have a son.'” So he curses everybody except his mom and dad, involved with his birth.

Hank Smith: 00:43:54 Because he doesn’t, he’s not going to break the commandment.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:43:57 I’m not going to break… I can’t curse mom and dad, but I’ll curse everybody else involved with my birth.

John Bytheway: 00:44:02 That midwife.

Hank Smith: 00:44:05 Thou shall not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal. The Lord starts rattling off commandments at this point. Where the other ones got longer explanations, these ones come fairly quickly.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:44:17 They’re somewhat self evident, I think. Thou shall not kill, that just holds true with any law code in any place. That’s not necessarily unique to Israel’s law code. Now, they will qualify this, obviously as you get into, in fact, in chapter 21 they’re going to give a bit of a qualification to this. And so to some degree, you can look at later elements of the law as further explanations or case studies based on some of these principles. But chapter 21 verses 12 and 13, 14, and even 15 for that matter, it continues on into this idea, suggests that there’s such thing as manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter, and voluntary manslaughter. I mean, if you look at verse 12, “He that smiteth a man so he should die, shall be surely put to death.” That’s the law.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:45:02 But then he goes on to Say, “If a man lie not in wait, but God deliver him into his hand, then I will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee.” So there is one exception into this, or at least in terms of manslaughter, two elements of this. One, if you weren’t lying in wait, and lying in wait suggests premeditation. If a man lie not in wait, and God deliver him into your hand, then I will appoint thee whither that he should flee. If God delivers him into your hand and it wasn’t premeditated, then we have two conditions by which the death penalty is avoided. What is intriguing, is those two are explicitly mentioned in First Nephi, chapter four.

Hank Smith: 00:45:41 That’s what I was going to say. It sounds just like Nephi. “I went beforehand, not knowing the things which I should do.”

John Bytheway: 00:45:49 “I will deliver him into thy hand.”

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:45:51 Yeah. And so, and that brings up some implications on the purpose of First Nephi chapter four. In other words, if the whole purpose of the chapter four was to simply let you know that the plates were received, then you never needed to tell the story about killing Laban, so the story has some meaning. By virtue of the fact that these two are so explicit in that narrative, suggests that there were individuals later that might have been accusing Nephi of murder, and so he gives you the full story. Now there’s more to it, and part of it is a legal explanation as to what really happened.

Hank Smith: 00:46:25 It’s almost as if Nephi has the expectation that I’ve read Exodus, right?

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:46:32 That’s the assumption, that you know the law and know it well enough to recognize.

John Bytheway: 00:46:36 Yeah. And I’m going to tell this story in words that will answer your objections right as I tell it, right? If you know Exodus as well.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:46:44 And then you have verse 14, it says, “But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbor to slay him with guile,” in this case it suggests that you weren’t waiting for him pre-meditatively, or it seemed as if this was a spontaneous running into someone. But the Lord’s like, “Ah, but you really did plan it,” well, then that’s still going to count as a murder.

Hank Smith: 00:47:05 Interesting. So He’s giving these basic principles in 20, and then clarifying some things.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:47:10 Yeah. Clarifying elements of this. Because the Lord recognizes that there are different situations. And that’s one of the great things I think about the law of Moses. Too often, it has been generalized. Oh, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Well yeah, but read that passage and see the immediate context, and you realize that is not the law for everything. The Lord knows that mistakes happen, the Lord understands that things happened that were out of people’s control, or that that was not the plan. And so, He’s got those covered too. It doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences, but we got ways to help you out in those regards.

Hank Smith: 00:47:45 Does He do the same thing with adultery? He gives the principle in 20 and then do some explaining later? Or is this more self explicit? Don’t…

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:47:55 Well, that one’s pretty straightforward. But you will have later, not developments but expansions on this, like, “This is who you’re not going to sleep with, this is who you’re not going to sleep with, this is who you’re not going to sleep with.” When I say don’t commit adultery, let’s carry this all the way through. When you look at one of the more famous ones, the code of Hammurabi. So Hammurabi was a Mesopotamian king from Babylon, I want to say the Middle Babylonian period, though it’s possibly the Old Babylonian period, but in any case he has a law code. And in there, adultery is mentioned in there, along with these are other people that you shouldn’t engage with.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:48:28 And a lot of these, particularly these last five, these are just basic understandings to maintaining a social institution. You can’t have a community if these are not in place. That just holds true regardless of whether you’re the people of God, or the people of anything. You don’t kill, you don’t commit adultery, you don’t steal, you don’t lie, you don’t covet thy neighbors stuff, which leads to envy. So, all of these are principles by which they just govern basic social behavior. And they have to be in place, otherwise you’re going to have conflict.

Hank Smith: 00:49:04 And people are too vulnerable to live in this kind of society, where there’s murder, and adultery, and stealing and lying. It’s just, we kind of saw that back in Sodom and Gomorrah, this idea of it’s unsafe even for strangers.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:49:17 And add another element into this too, at least from more of perhaps a Latter-Day Saint perspective, the coveting one is fascinating. The others are actual behaviors: don’t kill, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal and don’t lie. These are all actual behaviors that you engage in. But coveting is within, you can covet something and no one’s going to know. So, you can even see further development of the 10 Commandments into there’s the relationship that you have with God, both external and internal. There’s the relationship you have with your fellow beings, both external and internal. What strikes me about verse 17 is how it might hint, even though the text doesn’t bring it up here, just by virtue of being a community of God, and this is my assumption, and it’s just my personal assumption, that ultimately they’re expected to live a Zion like life.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:50:15 Every other community of God’s been expected to live a Zion… The moral and ethical behavior of Israel is meant to be one of a Zion-like people. That doesn’t change. Again, the law of God is the law of God. The moral and ethical behavior of Israel is held true, regardless of what dispensation you’re in. And if that’s the case, then it would seem to me that the ultimate end, whether or not they achieved it is beside the point. But the ultimate end of Ancient Israel was to bring about a Zion. And the law would point you towards Zion, like it does in every other dispensation and in every other community of God. And if that’s the case, then it’s possible verse 17 hints at Zion-like behavior.

John Bytheway: 00:50:57 It reminds me of the Beatitudes, where you’ve heard it said of old time, thou shalt not kill, this thesis, antithesis thing. But I say, this is a higher thing, and the Savior kind of brought them all in here. But as you mentioned, thou shalt not covet is an in here type of a thing. I like that, this is a Zion community area where we’re one heart, one mind, even have all things in common.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:51:23 And to that Beatitude, this is a place where I’ll deviate from I’m sure a number of my colleagues, but I don’t look at the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount as Christ so much instituting a new higher law, as much he is restoring the significant principles of the law, of the Mosaic Law. Here’s what I mean. If you look there in Matthew, those principles, this is verse 21: “You’ve heard that it was said by them of old time, thou shall not kill. And whosoever shall kill, shall be in danger of the judgment. I say to you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca shall be in danger of the council. But whosoever shall say, ‘Thou fool,’ shall be in danger of hell fire.”

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:52:08 Now notice the next word in verse 23, it’s therefore. And that means if we do not take into account verses 23 and 24, even all the way down through 26, if we do not put that into context of those verses, we’re not fully grasping what Christ is saying. Does that make sense? The therefore it’s a cause and effect. It’s the same thing we’ve seen with therefores before. So having instituted this new, you shouldn’t even call your brother a fool, here’s why, “therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar and thou rememberest thy brother hath ought against thee, leave thy gift and go fix it.” In other words, it’s put into the context of following the Law of Moses. If you are going to the altar, and if you are going to bring a gift or a sacrifice, then this is how you should be doing it. I’m not so sure that’s the higher law, as much as it is what the law was meant to be and has been lost.

Hank Smith: 00:53:08 It maybe had been diluted a little bit over the years.

John Bytheway: 00:53:11 What’s the great commandment in the law? Love God and love your neighbor. And that seems like a higher way to restate the 10 Commandments.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:53:20 And by the way, you can use the Book of Mormon to understand the function of this, because this same set of principles is in Third Nephi, Third Nephi chapter 12. And there the language is, “And you’ve heard it old time,” this is verse 21 of Third Nephi 12, “That you should not kill, wherefore who should ever kill shall be in danger of the judgment. I say unto you, that who soever was angry with his brother shall be in danger of his judgment, and whoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council, and whosoever shall say, ‘Thou, fool,’ shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore, if you shall come unto me, or should desire to come unto me and rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee, go thy way.”

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:53:56 In other words, the Law of Moses may have been fulfilled by Third Nephi. But the principle of coming to the altar and bringing a gift is in fact to come unto Christ. That’s not Him instituting a new higher law, it’s restoring the significance of the law. And points to what the Law of Moses was meant to do, at least in bringing a gift to the altar. When you do that, it’s meant to come unto Christ, come unto Him.

Hank Smith: 00:54:22 That’s great. Because we often do, I think, miss-see, misunderstand the Law of Moses in the way we talk about it.

John Bytheway: 00:54:29 If love God and love your neighbor are Law of Moses, and they are, those are internal. Love is a feeling, but it’s also a behavior manifested.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:54:37 And in fact, in Leviticus where you find the love thy neighbor, the same commandment shows up in the same chapter, to love the stranger. So if someone were to ask Christ, what are the three great commandments? They didn’t, they only asked him two. But if they were to ask the three, I think he would have said love God, love thy neighbor, love the stranger. And they all tie together.

John Bytheway: 00:54:57 But wasn’t that a dichotomy? They had their strangers and neighbors, and that’s why the Good Samaritan was, “Oh, well, who is my neighbor? Ha, ha, ha.” And then Jesus expands it to say, “Well, it’s everybody, even Samaritans.”

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:55:10 It’s very possible that when Christ is saying that, by saying love thy neighbor, he’s incorporating in the love the stranger commandment that was earlier in Leviticus.

John Bytheway: 00:55:19 Yeah, because a Samaritan is a stranger by that…

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:55:22 Right. So this concept of stranger, it plays a role throughout the Law of Moses. You’re supposed to treat the stranger, and love the stranger and care for the stranger. And God loves the stranger, he says in Deuteronomy 10. So I love the stranger, I expect you to love the stranger. And He gives a reason why, because you too are a stranger. You know exactly how this feels, you know what this is like. And therefore you should be able to empathize with this stranger.

Hank Smith: 00:55:48 I wanted to throw something in on coveting. There’s a great talk from Elder Holland called The Other Prodigal. So many of the Savior’s parables are about not coveting, not getting jealous when other people get blessings. And he says in this talk, he quotes someone else. “One observer has written, in a world that constantly compares people, ranking them as more or less intelligent, more or less attractive, more or less successful, it is not easy to really believe in a divine love that does not do the same. When I hear someone praised, it’s hard not to think of myself as less praiseworthy. When I read about the goodness and kindness of other people, it’s hard not to wonder if I myself am good and as kind as they.”

Hank Smith: 00:56:30 He goes on a little bit later and he says, “Most of the thou shalt not commandments are meant to keep us from hurting others. But I am convinced the commandment not to covet is meant to keep us from hurting ourselves.” I love that insight, is that God is kind of giving, this is the relationship with you and I, this is a relationship with you and your community, and this last one is your relationship with you, and not hurting yourself by constantly coveting. “It’s the same talk where he says, “You have to down another quart of pickle juice anytime anything good happens.”

John Bytheway: 00:57:03 Every time somebody else has a happy moment.

Hank Smith: 00:57:06 Great talk, great supplement.

John Bytheway: 00:57:08 So many of the parables, like you said, or many of them, some of them are about comparing. The same with the laborers in the vineyard, everybody’s happy with their wage until they, “Hey, wait,” and they look sideways. And that’s maybe another way to look at that coveting thing.

Hank Smith: 00:57:24 Dan, this has been a fantastic day. I am really just… Again, I feel like I see these chapters brand new. John, I know you feel the same way. You just feel like you-

John Bytheway: 00:57:36 Got a page of notes, and I just feel so blessed every time we do this, Hank.

Hank Smith: 00:57:39 Yeah. It’s just been new insights left and right. I think our listeners would be interested in the intersection of your education, your biblical scholarship and your Latter-Day Saint faith, and what that journey’s been like for you.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:57:56 I guess I’d have to say I believe that during some formative periods of my life, like many, through high school, through my mission into later periods of my life, I’ve always loved reading. I’ve never struggled with reading and reading comprehension. Now, I start there for a reason. Because primarily scripture text is reading and comprehension. So, that’s not a struggle that I’ve ever had. I know plenty of people do struggle with it. I know that it’s not always easy to grasp scripture the way it’s written, the way it’s structured, the way it’s even formatted. As personal as it sounds in my patriarchal blessing, and I guess that’s where it started, it talked about my schooling believe it or not, that I would go to more than one school. And I always thought that was intriguing.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:58:47 And truth be told, when I was probably 12, 13 years old I found out that you could become a doctor without becoming a doctor. And thought to myself, I can pull that off, that might be something I’m interested in. So, I kind of already knew about this thing called a PhD, and I knew that I was going to end up one eventually, whatever I was going to do. On my mission, the first area that I went to, and I just remember this because it sounds kind of hokey, maybe a bit naive, but my mission president gave all the new missionaries blessings in front of their zones. And mine had a blessing in which the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven would be opened up unto me.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 00:59:30 Now, I don’t know if I fully recognized what that means. Having said that, I had the opportunity to dive into scripture study on my mission that I never had before. Understanding text, understanding scripture, understanding new perspectives and new ways of doing it. So, I just devoured the scriptures on my mission. I read them a lot. And by that, I mean all of them, a lot. I remember we had the opportunity to meet with a minister of another denomination. And he said, “Tell you what: I’ll read the Book of Mormon if you promise to read the Bible.” But I went, “Done, done. I’ve done that. So, here’s the book, let’s go.” And that love just kind of kept developing.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 01:00:11 Now, my last interview with the mission president before he left, he sat me down and ended up, I guess, talking to me about some things that were not his normal set of advice given outside. So, my friends would go in and they’d say, “Well, he told me that I should go home and find a good woman, and move on in the plan.” When he sat down, he looked at me and he says, “Dan, here’s what you’re going to have to do. You need to go to school, and you need to learn.” He says, “Now when you do, you need to make sure that you always keep in mind the balance.” And he says, “And the balance is, there’s the spirit and there’s the intellect. Now, these two work together, but you must balance them. And if you do not have them balanced, you will have failed.”

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 01:01:04 And so, I left there going, my instruction was I need to go to school and I need to keep that balance. And so, that has just followed through, always loved the scriptures, I was planning on going into international relations, but got the opportunity to go to the Jerusalem program. Went there as a student, fell in love with the ancient world in a way that I hadn’t done before, came back and decided to get my advanced degrees in ancient studies. Got married, my wife hadn’t fully graduated from BYU yet, she was finishing up her last year, so I decided to stick around. And doing that work on a master’s degree at BYU, just to kind of prep, get some writing skills under my belt.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 01:01:45 And it was while I was there that Brent Top, who I think you guys have had on already, Brent Top, he had been one of the faculty at the Jerusalem Center. And he said, “So what are you doing?” And I said, “I’m just working for a professor, and now I’m working on this degree.” He says, “How would you like to teach for us?” And I said, “Oh, that sounds fun. Yeah, I’ll give it a shot.” And so, I got two Book of Mormon classes that semester. I always feel bad for those students. I didn’t even have a master’s degree, so I slid into one of these adjunct professors that was teaching without any advanced degrees, five, six years older, trying to teach them the Book of Mormon. Some of the Hebrew training’s now kicking in, things just started kicking in at about that time in my life, in terms of being able to understand, comprehend, collate and begin writing down some of the observations.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 01:02:36 And so, that’s where it began. Did that for three years, and then it was off to Chicago for learning a set of skills there. And I took in a program in Chicago that trained me in languages. I’m not actually good at languages. I’m competent in them, that’s why I needed to go to Chicago, was to gain competency so that when I would speak and write about these things, I felt confident in my competency. And so, that’s what I did. I was always able to separate between what the theories of the academy or this scholarship was saying about these things, recognize them for the value that they had, and yet be able to put aside that which doesn’t reflect the restoration, and the principles of the restoration. Scripture to me, at least the restoration, opens up a set of texts that I take as seriously as the Bible, therefore opens up my avenues to understanding.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 01:03:29 It comes back to something I mentioned earlier. I really do believe in the importance of being able to see a far off, to be able to have this cosmic perspective to reality. I think that changes everything. I think it has the potential to bring about that great gift that Christ promises, which is peace. And He talks about peace in John, “This peace I’ve given to you, that’s not like the world, but a divine peace.” That peace comes from that bigger perspective. And that bigger perspective is enhanced with the more windows that you have. If all you’ve got is a biblical text, and if all you’ve got are academic methodologies, they limit the view you’re going to have. They’re limited to honestly, this particular time and space, and a very limited aspect of this particular time in space.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 01:04:18 But the restored scriptures, along with the Old Testament and New Testament, expand that horizon. They expand the context and the contours of these things. It’s through Joseph Smith that we recognize the experience that Israel was given in the first place, is a very real experience. A very real one that we all can have, that we all can experience. Nephi’s expansion on this, with a recognition that part of the gospel of Christ is having the father saying unto you, “You shall have eternal life,” is a big deal. These are real experiences from real people, that become models for behavior moving forward. That grand vision of what Joseph called the economy of God, I think is ultimately absolutely essential to exaltation.

Hank Smith: 01:05:01 What a fantastic day. John, we have just been so blessed. I am sure that there are people out there just going, “I did not want that to end,” because I didn’t want it to end. So grateful for you, Dan. Thank you for coming and spending your time with us today.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 01:05:17 My pleasure, that was fun.

Hank Smith: 01:05:18 This is what we do for fun, everyone. This is our idea of fun, is chapter by chapter, verse by verse.

John Bytheway: 01:05:25 Yeah, so fun.

Dr. Daniel Belnap: 01:05:26 It’s not a bad gig, that’s for sure.

John Bytheway: 01:05:27 No, it’s such a blessing.

Hank Smith: 01:05:29 We want to thank Dr. Dan Belnap for being with us today. We want to thank our executive producers, Steve and Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors David and Verla Sorensen, and we hope all of you will join us next week on another episode of Follow Him.